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Second round of environmental performance assessments (2007–2011)

During the second round of EPAs, increased emphasis was given to building national capacity, producing better quality information, and ensuring that analytical results fed into national planning processes.

National consultants and focal government agencies led the EPA work and this ‘learn-by-doing’ approach has seen the establishment of national EPA offices or ‘nodes’ in the GMS. With the EPA process embedded in government focal agencies, closer collaboration with a wide range of sectors and ministries became easier and in turn resulted in better information and data.

The second round EPAs continued to analyze the same environmental priority areas as occurred under the first round, namely biodiversity conservation, climate change, poverty reduction, capacity building and sustainable natural resources management. Climate change did, however, become a greater priority for most of the GMS countries during this period.

One notable difference in approach was the use of the Development Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) framework, an extension of the pressure-state-response framework used for the first round. This has enabled deeper insights into pressures on the environment as well as the social and biophysical impacts associated with environmental change.

The timing of the EPAs was geared around opportunities to influence GMS countries’ national development strategies, such as Lao PDR’s Seventh Five-Year Socio-Economic Development Plan (2011–2015).